In late 2008, Jillian Banfield came to Doudna because she was worried that many of the most important discoveries in the field of CRISPR had already been found. This conversation was one factor that initiated a feeling of inadequacy in her impact on science. She wanted to see her work go beyond academia and research. She wanted to have her work be applied to products and used more broadly. So in January of 2009, she officially started her position at Genentech, a leading biotechnology company. However, she immediately began feeling regret about her decision. She liked the idea of seeing her work applied, but she had an intense feeling that she had made the wrong decision and that she truly belonged in the area of academia. It was a difficult time as she was unable to get sleep for many nights, but with the help of some colleagues at Berkeley she was able to return to the school by March of 2009. Before leaving for Genentech, Doudna had been hiring students for her lab. One of the most promising of them was Rachel Haurwitz. Rachel was born in Austin, Texas in 1985. She, like Doudna, had grown up with a fascination with RNA. When she joined the lab in 2008 she quickly became caught up with CRISPR and began working with Blake Wiedenheft. After working out the structure of Cas1, Blake had been working on researching the other Cas proteins but had been having trouble with the Cas6 protein. Together, Rachel, Blake, and Martin Jinek were able to determine that the Cas6 protein was responsible for latching onto the longer RNA strands and slicing them into smaller pieces that could then attack the invading virus DNA. Collaboration like this was crucial to Doudna and she worked hard to develop that in her lab. Doudna had left Genentech to return to Berkeley, but the original desire to apply her research towards having a more direct impact on health technologies had not escaped her. She began looking at the idea of a startup that would allow her to explore that without having to leave academia. During Rachel Haurwitz’s last year at Doudna’s lab, Doudna asked Rachel what she wanted to do after she left the lab and she replied “run a biotech company.” A few days later Doudna returned to Rachel and proposed the idea of starting their own company built around using the Cas6 and other CRISPR enzymes as a tool. In 2011 Doudna and Haurwitz founded Caribou, “a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing transformative genome-edited allogeneic cell therapies for devastating human diseases.” The company is still running with Haurwitz as the CEO and Doudna as the lead scientific advisor. One project they are currently working on is a gene therapy for cancer patients.
1 Comment
Anne P. Sharp
1/12/2022 08:45:48 pm
Hooray for startups!!! Love your photo graphics. Brings a lot of energy to your blog. So nicely done!
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AuthorMy name is Nathan Eberhart. I have a curious mind and am a creative thinker with an interest in biomedical engineering and medical devices. Archives
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